BitTorrent Sync Android App Preview

I have been using the BitTorrent Sync app in a couple of my desktops to sync files between them and it has been working great so far. When I heard that they were also working on a mobile app I signed up to volunteer to test it. Yesterday I got an email saying that I was able to download the app to my Android phone and start testing the new app. While the mobile app is still in closed testing right now and it is still considered alpha, I am pretty impressed with the app.

Since the app is not released through the Google Play Store yet you need to enable the ability to install apps from unknown sources. Easy enough to do. I also had to update the desktop versions of the BitTorrent Sync client to be compatible with the mobile client. Only took a few minutes to do. I then created a synced folder between my desktop and the mobile client to sync my music from the desktop to the mobile.

The mobile immediately synced the music to the desktop and I copied a new album to the mobile sync folder on my desktop. The BitTorrent Sync mobile app currently is a selective sync, meaning the new files I added on the desktop do not sync to the mobile without tapping on them in the mobile client. It will be nice to see that changed to you can sync an entire folder with just a tap instead of needing to go in and tap on each individual file. A small inconvenience at the moment, but forum posts suggest this will change.

The app also offers the ability to automatically copy your photos from the device to your desktop. I have not actually tried that part of the app yet, but will be taking a look at it in the near future. Perhaps once the app is a little more mature. Would hate to risk losing the photos.

The app is still new and there will be plenty of changes still to come. I notice that currently you cannot turn off the app and there does not seem to be away to have the notification turned off that it is running. It would be nice to only have that appear when the app is actively doing something. The app also cannot currently sync files larger than 2GB. That could be a concern for people using tablets that want to sync movies or larger files.

I have used many different ways to copy files to my Android device, SugarSync, Bitcasa, Mozy, Carbonite and Dropbox to name a few, but the BitTorrent Sync app is an exciting option to sync files to and from your mobile to other mobiles and your desktops without actually copying files to third party cloud services.